Iceman

The Roast

“Drake's Iceman is his most controlled album in five years, which means it is also his least interesting. Every song hits the marks Drake albums hit. The hook lands. The vocal performance is technically excellent. The flex is the right size. And by track four you have already heard the entire creative range of the record. The production is glossy in the way Drake records get glossy when the inner circle is making sure nothing risks the streaming numbers. There are three genuinely good songs here. There are also nine songs that exist to make the streaming algorithm happy and the radio programmers comfortable. The album is professionally made and emotionally hollow, which is a thing Drake has been doing for long enough that it now reads as a deliberate aesthetic choice rather than a creative failure.”

The Bright Side

When Drake commits to a song, he is still one of the most technically gifted vocalists in the genre. Three tracks here remind you why he became inescapable in the first place. The opener has actual musical ideas. The closing track is genuinely beautiful and barely sounds like Drake.

Hardest Sneer

“Iceman is what happens when a generational talent decides that the safest version of his work is the version worth releasing. Drake at his peak made music that felt like a person was inside it. Iceman feels like a quarterly report.”

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